This is a long and turbulent post. I have tried to make it interesting but for those with a short attention span, it ends OK.
I had a complex itinerary that has needed multiple changes due to cancelled flights through Japan, the Russian airspace situation and most recently a wish to not have a week's stopover in Sri Lanka. I booked a new route through India that were on horrid night time flights and thought I would change to daytime flights if any came up.
This week they came up.
I have spent most of the week on the phone to Qantas trying to change two flights MEL-SYD-KUL - same date, just different times. I thought it would be easy.
In the event, the new flights kept disappearing from the itinerary before they were ticketed - often within a few hours. I kept being told the itinerary would be repriced manually. I kept being cut off or assured it was all in rain, but it never happened. In the course of this I encountered various lies. This included that MH flights could only be booked through MH and not QF and - the classic - someone pretending to take my credit card details to get me off the line. My card was never charged.
Then some of my ticketed flights were dropped from the itinerary, including KUL-DEL which was not even being changed.
Then today all my itinerary was unticketed. I have not had a happy day, dealing with various agents who promised the revised itinerary would be priced and ticketed. Then, one agent told me the problem was a system error because my QR flight DOH-TUN had become a codeshare flight operated by Oman Airways - this was not allowed in the OWA rules so that was why the itinerary could not be priced or ticketed. I quickly found an alternative route DOH-CMN-TUN that took me within 100 miles of the max allowance. Computer said no because the CMN-TUN flight was in Y and apparently a reissued ticked cannot change from J to Y. I feel sure this is incorrect, but now was not the time or place to debate the issue in case it became a barrier to everything else being reticketed. While talking to the agent, I had to decide between spending 5 days in CMN instead of TUN, or doing a revenue flight to get from CMN to TUN. Then I just asked to check whether there was a CMN-TUN the next morning with J availability and there was. Yay!
I have spent most of the evening trying to nudge the ticketing people into action. I was sure the itinerary would need to be repriced and I would have to pay a surcharge. One agent said she had priced it and there was no extra to pay. Sounded too good to be true (and I have learned over the past week that unexpectedly good news seldom ends well). I asked to stay on the line while it was ticketed but got cut off. I have been refreshing CMT like a mad thing al evening, resigning myself to a sleepless night and another day of frantic phone calls tomorrow. But now I see ticket numbers in CMT for every sector (yes, I checked). I feel a huge sense of relief.
New itinerary, in case anyone is interested:
MEL-SYD-KUL-DEL (QF, MH, MH - overnight in KUL)
stop 1 - revenue Y flight on AI to IXL (Leh) for a week
DEL-LHR (BA)
stop 2 - revenue Y flight on BA to BHD for a weekend nested in two weeks in Kent
LHR-DOH-IKA (QR, QR - overnight in DOH)
stop 3 - two week tour of Iran
IKA-DOH-CMN-TUN (QR, QR, AT - overnight in Doha and Casablanca)
stop 4 - four days in Tunis
TUN-AMM (RJ)
stop 5 - 10 days in Jordan
AMM-LHR-HEL-DEL-MEL (RJ, AY, AY, QF - overnight in LHR, all day stop in DEL)
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